Yolande

Oh, hey! Just coming up for air over here and I feel the need to report on some major home renovations that have taken place in the 3 weeks we've owned our house. I feel like we are machines with all of this DIY-madness and yet our pesky 'real jobs' are seriously affecting our ability to get things done as quickly as we'd like. There are only so many hours in the day, right?

Remember that there are the Big Three projects we want to complete prior to moving into the house: 1. The floors, 2. The kitchen, and 3. Painting. This tiny little list is a little deceiving because simple words like 'do the kitchen' actually means spending hundreds of hours on various projects within the four kitchen walls. A little word like 'paint' doesn't really capture the fact that we are painting every wall in the house, the ceilings of some rooms, the crown molding, wood trim, etc etc etc. I am about painted out, my friends, but we aren't quite finished yet.

And so, 'part one' of our renovations shall be documented here. Because one of out of our three big projects is complete!! The floors are done, holla!! And so a big chunk of our budget is also gone:)

1. The Floors.

Well, if you do remember, our entire house was carpeted with blue wool carpeting including the stairs and every bedoom on the second floor (well, technically the bedrooms and hallways up there weren't blue but whatever.) The kitchen contained some awesome 70's linoleum that was a lovely creamy/gray color. And yet we knew our entire house MUST have original hardwood flooring hiding underneath the carpet and linoleum. So on the second night of owning our house, after Truman went to bed, I went over there with Nate and my father-in-law while Lois listened to Truman's baby monitor at home. And the boys went.to.town on that carpeting.

They pulled every single strip of it up on their own in two nights. Then they had to remove all of the little boards with eleventy billion nails and staples across all of our floors. They only cussed a few times and I think the worst of it was on the stairs, where there were seriously about a million staples just hanging out on our wood. Then they had to gather up all of the nasty carpet pieces, the deathly splintered wood strips, and the numerous nails/staples and they hauled it off to the dump in a friend's big truck. I think it took about 3 loads to get rid of it all and I actually did help gather some of it up because I could tell that this project was getting VERY old to the men:) I don't think any of us were too terribly sad to say goodbye to that wool carpeting and I know Nate's allergies were really giving him hell after all of that work. But the good news is: by having the boys do all of this prep work for our floors, we saved about $600 bucks! The hardwood flooring company that came in later said the guys did a great job and it was a total money saver on our end and so I declare it was worth it. :) They did not touch the linoleum in the kitchen, though, since it was 3 layers deep and full of black tar that I was worried contained asbestos. We gladly paid an extra $150 to have the pros remove that junk.

(the uncovered hardwood discovered! And the kitchen linoleum, too)



So next step was getting the professional company to come and give us an estimate. Because our floors were 'protected' by the carpet for the past 40 years they were in really, really good shape. But man, that varnish was pretty freaking ugly and we knew the floors needed a good sanding, then a stain, and then a finish. The company we chose was super fast with their work and it only took them two days to sand the entire place, one day to stain, and then two days to apply the finish. Amazing. If we had attempted this task on our own I think we'd still be sanding our life away.

(after day one of sanding...wow!)


After they did the sanding we could immediately see the lovely potential in our wood floors---which have very narrow planks at just 1.5 inches, compared to the typical 2.25 inches you see. The entire house has red oak wood except for the kitchen, where it's maple instead. I was beyond stressed when I had to pick out the stain all by myself on a day Nate was working. They showed me these three options and I was sweating bullets about this decision. Although Truman was present during the turmoil he was mostly focused on his Elmo DVD and didn't exactly help me out too much.

(nutmeg, golden oak, or natural finish without stain. I picked the middle 'golden oak' after much debate between that and the nutmeg. I really did love the darker stain but was worried it was a bit ashy. Plus the hardwood dudes thought the golden oak would look best and swore it would turn out darker when applied to the entire floors, along with the top coat finish. Seriously such a big decision!)


We knew we'd want the oak in the majority of the house to be stained, but the maple in the kitchen should always remain natural, apparently. After being really worried that the kitchen would have a lot of damage to the original wood, considering the layers of linoleum and years of being totally hidden--there was only one small repair that was needed in there. The rest of the wood was in 'excellent shape.' The repair required the company cutting down 'standard' size planks to our narrow width, sanding, and finishing it off. I am so glad we had them repair that patch for us. Again, money well spent, in my opinion.

(before--in the kitchen, after sanding, discovering the missing patch of wood.)



(after--note the new replaced wood on the bottom right corner of this pic. Fully refinished without stain in the kitchen!)

We chose to 'upgrade' our finish to the top of the line, strongest/hardest brand out there. It only needed two coats and it should last us a VERY long time. I have to say that I am obsessed with our hardwood floors now and it was money well spent (although it did cost a pretty penny). And what a blessing that the floors were in such great shape under the carpet and that even the kitchen turned out so wonderfully. We were worried the kitchen might be in rough shape and we'd have to tile it or lay down engineered wood instead. But nope, all original stuff, baby. (Besides that little patch in the kitchen)

Final reveal photos!!

(Main room before we moved in...)


(After removing the carpet...)


(After sanding...)


(Ta Da!! Stained and Refinished)












I just realized I haven't taken any pictures of the upstairs bedrooms with the refinished floors. I promise that we also did the entire second floor, too. You will see more pictures of the upstairs in my future 'painting posts', though, don't worry.

And so, project #1 out of 3 is done. And of course, this is the only one that was done mostly by the professionals. The kitchen and the painting is pretty much all us. Stay tuned for updates on those babies!

My biggest project in our house thus far has definitely been painting. Nate hates to paint and so he's mostly focusing all of his time on the kitchen, which is fine by me because pulling down cabinet doors and fixing up wood holes sounds awful to me. I love to paint and volunteered to tackle the massive project of transforming our house with a little COLOR on the walls. Plus painting every other conceivable surface out there, but we'll get to that in a minute. I love picking paint colors even though it's pretty stressful for me, too. Nothing like painting the interior of a 1700 square foot house in just a few weeks to make a lady crazy, right? But we have to have the paint done before we move in---it just makes more sense to do it before furniture and people are in the way. Want to see what I've done so far?

MAIN ROOM transformation:

This was the room that had all cream colored walls, crown molding, and ceilings. Along with blue carpet. It's also basically huge which is great for when we live in the room, but not so fun while painting every surface of the room. At 24 feet by 13 feet, it's easily the largest room of the house and where I forsee us spending most of our time. Wanna see the true before picture again?

Bam.


I decided to go with Behr's 'Cloudy Day' for the wall color, and picked two shades lighter for our ceilings in there (which was basically 'Wave Crest' plus another 25% shot of white). Next came the fun part of removing ALL of the hideous window coverings including about 5 types of rods and screws and hinges on each window. This was not fun, guys. I wiped off all the walls and woodwork and got to town. I think it took me about 5 hours to paint these walls with some help from my mother-in-law on the edging (I prefer rolling it on, she likes edging, therefore we are a perfect pair.). The ceiling and crown molding paint jobs took another 5 hours. Ick. And so?

Main room walls during the painting day. Also, note that the ceilings are still white at this point and the crown molding still 'creamy'. Which, to me, is such a waste because the crown molding is SO pretty--why not make it pop out more?


Main room after walls and ceiling painted, but before crown molding turned cream into white:


And after the crown molding was transformed by the white. Isn't it insane how the ceiling looks a lot less blue with that white against it?


During the crown molding paint job:




All that is left to pain in here is the dark woodwork :::dodging the stone-throwing from the crowd again, as I type that phrase:::: I really do think it will be amazing with bright white wood everywhere though. It's very 'us' and I know it's going to suck big time to put in the hours for painting wood work. But I really do think it will be worth it!

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DINING ROOM transformation:

After a lot of debate, I decided to keep the dining room the same color as the family/main room. They flow together very nicely so it makes sense and plus, this dining room will be one that keeps some of it's dark woodwork (the built-in and the windows will remain) so I'm sure that will make the blue walls look totally different than the main room. I wanted to paint the ceilings in here, too, but it sucked so bad in the main room I just can't bring myself to break my neck in there again. Plus I ran out of paint although I thought I bought enough of the 'Wave Crest' ceiling shade for the two rooms. I take that as a sign from God that the ceilings might remain cream colored in there. We did paint the crown molding bright white though. 

Built-in buffet before paint and before I hacked away those ugly curtains:


And after the paint. Also shows a nice shot of our new floors! Never mind that the buffet is a huge storage area for us right now.


After blue goes on the walls, looking into the sunroom. But this doesn't show the crisp white crown molding just yet. It's there but no pictures to show it off.


Only remaining paint project in the dining room will be the baseboards and door frames. Plus those French doors that lead into the sunroom. Sigh. Lots of painting still ahead. I believe it took us about 3 hours to paint the walls and another 1.5 hours to do the crown molding. That stuff is no joke with all of those little twists and turns but I love it. :)
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SUNROOM transformation:

I haven't gotten any great pictures of our sunroom to show you just yet. Must work on that. But this is the room that I painted Behr's 'Peridot' green and I just sort of like it. I am hoping that with white woodwork I will love it though. I have yet to paint the crown molding a bright white and I think I will actually muster up the energy to paint the ceiling two shades lighter than the walls, which is Behr's 'White Willow' color. It's only 10x12 so it can't be THAT bad, right? 

Before painting walls, and before floors:


After painting the walls green, and after floors are refinished:


Painting this room, including the rolling and edging, only took us about 3 hours. Gotta love smaller rooms.The ongoing paint projects in here: crown molding, all woodwork, and ceiling (plus French doors).

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BEDROOM transformations:

I don't need to do much else besides the walls in these three bedrooms. I'm not going to bother with the ceilings, and I'll probably just leave the crown molding the off white color. The other woodwork is all white, except for the baby's room---for some unknown reason, they painted that entire room a pastel yellow that is really ugly, if you ask me. So I guess I will be painting her woodwork white in there. Luckily the other two bedrooms are already the color I'd choose for the woodwork, though.


Master bedroom:
I chose Behr's 'Honey Bird' yellow for our room. It's a bold choice, probably the brightest room of the house, but it's going to be SO awesome combined with our gray and white bedspread. There's nothing like a warm, inviting color in the master to make this a fun room. It took me about 3 hours to do this room.

Here is the true before, carpet and all:


During painting day:


After! The floors aren't stained/finished here, though. And I swear the real color is not such a bright 'highlighter yellow'. It's actually quite pretty in real life (aside from iPhone pictures).


Truman's room: 
This is turning out to be the room that is the thorn in my side right now. I wanted T's room to be a nice, pale gray. And I KNEW it would be hard to nail the right shade but I was still too cheap to actually buy samples first. As soon as I put Behr's 'Gentle Rain' color on  his walls, I panicked. I really thought it looked lavender and I was seriously thinking about returning the entire gallon and starting from scratch. But I kept plugging away because Nate and my mother-in-law (and everyone else that I've shown) swear it's a fine gray, not too purple. I'm still not 100% convinced, though, and I'm hoping that by adding T's bright colored accents in there I barely even notice my pet peeve wall color. Truman didn't yell 'PURPLE' when he saw it, either. So that's a great sign. It took me 3 hours to do this room (apparently that is how long it takes me to do most of these rooms)

Before:


During the painting episode:


After painting, floors only sanded but not stained in this shot:

It really does look purple in this pic, huh? In real life I don't even think it's *that* bad.

Baby's room:
This room also took me 3 hours to paint and I actually did it one night after Truman went to bed. I picked Behr's 'Wildwood Spring' which is a pretty robin's egg blue to me. I just really hate that I still have to paint her woodwork white because it almost looks white in this 'before' picture from online. I wonder if the owners repainted the whole thing after this picture was taken and went with the yellow instead. Should have asked me first !! :)

Before we moved in:


After I painted the walls, but before floors were stained, and before I bother to paint the woodwork WHITE and not this ugly yellow:

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So that's that. A ridiculous amount of painting on my part, huh? I just added it up and that looks like about 27 hours of straight painting and I'm not even done yet. I really do enjoy painting, thankfully, but man---it's a lot of work! Luckily, with my trusty mask and lots of fans I am still following doctor's orders and not killing my baby from fumes or anything.

Really not looking forward to prepping and painting all of the dark woodwork on the first floor. But I think I have convinced Nate to help with this large task. And I didn't mention the kitchen at all just yet, since that is it's own separate project and painting the walls won't come until much later. We also haven't touched either bathroom or any of the hallways with paint. Not sure I have enough energy to bother right now anyway.

Off to paint some more...

This post has no real point except to document our gargantuan (read: expensive) dreams for this house. Nate and I love to discuss all of the options for the exterior of our home, and you can regularly find us sitting outside after kid-bedtime, going over the same ideas on repeat. I'm sure many of you can relate, especially if you have a house as old as ours, built in 1925 with constant projects in the works. Or at least, at work in our head;)

We've already done plenty of updates to the interior of our house. But now the 'big dogs' remain: windows, insulation, roof, siding, and....possible addition for a fourth bedroom and master bath. YIKES, right? But if we do these updates, we could feasibly stay here forever and we really don't want to change locations. We love everything about the inside of our house, except that we only have three beds and one full bathroom. But the exterior? Not our favorite at all.

So much brown. Wood, painted siding needs a complete scrape and re-paint job. I don't think we would replace the wood siding and cedar shakes with cement board, just to preserve the original look of the house and because the wood is in great shape (paint is not).

The roof is probably never going to leak but with a solid three layers of old shingles, it's a tear-off that needs to happen more for aesthetics than anything.

And our windows? The bottom level boasts original 90 year old windows, the upstairs have some replaced screens but are mostly original, too. We still have to switch out storms in the winter and screens in the summer, something that many people don't even understand as a possibility! Storing a boat load of heavy storm widows, then massive screens in our basement is really not fun or effective. We had an energy audit done to the house and the windows themselves are in great shape and really don't need to be fully replaced, just cleaned up on the inside and we want to get a new exterior storm/screen combo. Bear with me, folks, I know these details are boring! But look at the potential. BEFORE (current):




GLORIOUS AFTER! (a friend's husband did this photoshop version for us, love it).


We might not do a bright door and are leaning more towards restoring the original wood door, staining it dark possibly. But the color scheme of a dark gray roof, lighter gray siding with the upper cedar shakes slightly darker than the lower level, and then white trim are going to happen. I like the idea of keeping the windows darker gray with the trim white, since we love the look of our windows and want them to pop. I would even consider a fourth shade of gray for little accents around the windows and the trim.

It's all so fun to think about and dream about and talk about. Actually DOING these renovations are daunting, and we aren't crazy enough to think we can DIY it all. But Nate and my father-in-law are convinced they can scrape off the old paint on our siding, and repaint it in 'just a few weeks'. Insert major eye roll emoji here, seriously. Tony HAS scraped off all of the paint at his own house, which also has original wooden siding. He has been repainting the house for oh, four years now....but to give him credit, I know he could potentially do this mammoth project at our house. Not sure how he thinks he will have the time, though.

We'd hire someone for the roof, obviously, and would buy the exterior windows somewhere. The dudes think they can hang the new part of each window. Did I mention we have thirty-three windows in our house, and a window company once told us that an average house has thirteen windows to be replaced? Yeah, that's a fun fact. $$$$$$$. Insulation needs to go in around the house, which is a 'hire-out' job, too. Oh, and the garage. We need to repaint and re-roof the garage, too. Sigh.

The addition is a concept that just won't quit in our heads, either. We have a full, walk-up attic with a flight of stairs to the third level right now. To make it functional and not completely pitched, we'd have to re-do the back of the house at the roofline. Then we could have the attic as a master bedroom and bathroom, plus an extra room across the second level of our house where our 'airing porch' lies right now. I would think that if this addition is actually happening in the near future, we should just wait to do the roof and also the siding at that point, right?

This is when I start to space out and just stare at the 'after' picture. Isn't it pretty? Someday! We just need to decide if it's worth it to invest so much money into our beloved house, or if buying a different house makes more sense. For now we talk and dream. Extensively. Who else loves to dream about house projects with us?